I have survived my first month in the market and somehow I am up about $200. I thought I had learned so much in the past year, but I have learned much more in the past month. I have screenshot all of my trades in chronological order and pasted on all of my entries and exits. That was an education in itself. When I am trading actively I only use the 1 minute daily chart, volume and VWAP. Of my first 69 trades I qualified only 22 as good trades, 30 as bad trades, 11 of them were into downtrending stocks below VWAP (WTF!!) and 7 of them appear to just be totally random entries out of nowhere (again WTF!!!). Yet somehow I am still in the green and now I am armed with what works for me. Of my good trades 8 were dip buys, 6 were Pre-market Hi's at the open (P/M O) and 7 were Pre-market Hi's Late after the first 5 minutes (P/M L). 8 of my good trades were in 2 stocks and 5 of them in 1 stock. When I first started watching vid's of daytrading, guys would say how you need to be in good physical shape because trading takes a lot out of you physically and mentally and all I could think was, Oh yeah sitting at your computer making money.... how exhausting. Once you start trading you realize how absolutely right they are. One day I was totally wiped after a trade grinded on for hours, I was not totally hip on a trailing stop-loss yet and I could not believe that it was so exhausting. I started to look into the psychological side of trading and could not believe what I found. From what I am reading all of our basic instincts and basically the animal part of our brain that are all there to keep us safe and alive cannot differentiate between us about to be eaten by a lion and having $500 worth of our capital riding on a short-term trade in the market. I mean ....REALLY??... you gotta be kidding me. Up til now life has always been presented to me as if it is not going your way  you need to work harder, if you fail then try again, suck it up butter cup. I am finding out that you do not need to be like the young Skywalker, you need to be like the old Yoda. 

   I have lead a fairly disciplined adult life, I used to run triathalons and marathons, so I am used to a very strict training and dietary regimen, but trading is a whole different animal when it comes to discipline. It is a far more supple and patient discipline, not a grind it out no matter how much it hurts discipline. I was ready to go back to paper-trading again but I realized that all I really need to do is adhere to the trading plan that I develop and do not deviate from it at all. You need to constantly be adapting, learning and growing. Looking at your past trades to develop your future trading tactics. I realize that I am a trader with 1 months live trading experience trying to share my ?knowledge? with you, but I realize also that most of us run into the same obstacles and a little insight into the experience can sometime make all the difference for you. I have gleaned a lot from some of the blogs I have read on this site and I listen to a lot of 'chat with traders' podcast. On those podcasts I hear incredibly successful trader/mentors describing themselves struggling with the same problem I am experiencing now and the answer is usually patience, more education and learning from others that have been there and done that before. I cannot wait for a year from now to look back at these blogs and look at the charts for my first month of trades, because in just 1 month I am watching the evolution of the trader I am morphing into and so far the outlook is pretty positive. Aloha and good trading.